Informing or Exploiting? Public Reponses to Giuliana Rancic’s Health Narrative

Abstract

Popular entertainment journalist Giuliana Rancic has shared her struggles with pregnancy loss, infertility, and breast cancer in an array of public forums. In this study, we analyzed online comments responding to public discourses surrounding Rancic’s revelations, including her miscarriage and fertility treatments, her breast cancer diagnosis, and her decision to undergo a double mastectomy. Our goal was to explore how the public framed Rancic’s health challenges. Using a narrative lens, we argue that online comments reveal the tensions that celebrities like Rancic must manage as they contend with public scrutiny of their stories. Online commenters in this study framed Rancic’s narrative as a privileged vantage point in which she exploited her health struggles for personal and financial gain. Our analysis of these comments also demonstrates how Rancic’s narrative exists in concert with other discourses that challenge and disrupt her own account of events. The examination of these mediated discourses has implications for understanding the role of celebrity experiences in personal and public conversations about health.